Loading survMisc removes the default methods of xtable

[nicholashanoian]

Hello,

Loading xtable and then survMisc removes all of xtable's default methods.
You can see that the methods are being removed by running methods(xtable) before and after loading survMisc. I am using R version 3.5.3, survMisc 0.5.5 , and xtable 1.8-3.

See the following example:

library(xtable)

# make a data frame and print an xtable of it, works fine
df <- data.frame(x=1:5, y=2:6)
xtable(df) 
#> % latex table generated in R 3.5.3 by xtable 1.8-3 package
#> % Sat Apr 27 00:29:08 2019
#> \begin{table}[ht]
#> \centering
#> \begin{tabular}{rrr}
#>   \hline
#>  & x & y \\ 
#>   \hline
#> 1 &   1 &   2 \\ 
#>   2 &   2 &   3 \\ 
#>   3 &   3 &   4 \\ 
#>   4 &   4 &   5 \\ 
#>   5 &   5 &   6 \\ 
#>    \hline
#> \end{tabular}
#> \end{table}

# show the methods of xtable
methods(xtable) 
#>  [1] xtable.anova*            xtable.aov*             
#>  [3] xtable.aovlist*          xtable.coxph*           
#>  [5] xtable.data.frame*       xtable.glm*             
#>  [7] xtable.gmsar*            xtable.lagImpact*       
#>  [9] xtable.lm*               xtable.matrix*          
#> [11] xtable.prcomp*           xtable.sarlm*           
#> [13] xtable.sarlm.pred*       xtable.spautolm*        
#> [15] xtable.sphet*            xtable.splm*            
#> [17] xtable.stsls*            xtable.summary.aov*     
#> [19] xtable.summary.aovlist*  xtable.summary.glm*     
#> [21] xtable.summary.gmsar*    xtable.summary.lm*      
#> [23] xtable.summary.prcomp*   xtable.summary.sarlm*   
#> [25] xtable.summary.spautolm* xtable.summary.sphet*   
#> [27] xtable.summary.splm*     xtable.summary.stsls*   
#> [29] xtable.table*            xtable.ts*              
#> [31] xtable.zoo*             
#> see '?methods' for accessing help and source code


# now load survMisc, it warns about masking xtable
library(survMisc) 
#> Loading required package: survival
#> 
#> Attaching package: 'survMisc'
#> The following object is masked from 'package:xtable':
#> 
#>     xtable

# try to print the xtable again
xtable(df)
#> Error in UseMethod("xtable"): no applicable method for 'xtable' applied to an object of class "data.frame"

# show the methods of xtable now
methods(xtable) # just xtable.survfit* and xtable.table*  
#> [1] xtable.survfit* xtable.table*  
#> see '?methods' for accessing help and source code